Sleeping Dogs (2024)

As you can surmise, the full title could have been “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie”. And if we’re being honest, we lie to ourselves about the past, always. This isn’t a Mandela Effect, this is a deliberate reframing of events, to protect ourselves from self incrimination.

In a short discussion on the weekend, Roger, Susan’s son-in-law, and I talked about memories. My take on the fact that eyewitnesses often have conflicting and contradictory viewpoints is that they, in the end, round out the memory of the whole event, probably ‘written’ in the Akashic records. That’s why certain psychics and mediums can access the ‘whole truth and nothing but the truth’. So help us, God.

Russell Crowe’s character, Roy Freeman, has very limited memories, after suffering a catastrophic car accident, after a heavy night of drinking. Now a retired police detective, he is asked to help the man convicted in a decade’s old murder investigation to prove his innocence by revisiting the case.

Because Roy is undergoing an experimental treatment of his Alzheimer’s, his memories are returning slowly. As his fragmented thoughts start to fit together, he finds that there is a conspiracy to hide the truth, culminating in his recovering the baseball bat that was buried in the back garden. That triggers a confrontation which effectively ‘solves’ the murder mystery, and frees the jailed man. But the memories don’t stop coming, and Roy realizes who really committed the murder.

As I often say, “Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”